Connections

A small Yorkshire village reveals an intriguing web of connections that stretch around the globe. David Bridgeman-Sutton explains.

What is the connection between a Rhodes Scholar from New Zealand, a notorious Russian spy, a famous composer and an eccentric Yorkshire squire? Yes - a version of the old parlour game.

1: Frederick Delius, c. 1900; Lived not far from Arthington

The squire was the Reverend Thomas Sheepshanks, “squarson” (squire and parson) of Arthington, an estate a few miles from Leeds. (Its dog-kennel is now listed as a building of architectural importance).

For generations, his family divided its talents between the woollen textile industry and education. He ran the estate, but his great passion was for church music at the time that organs and surpliced choirs were being introduced into parish churches.

His own village - with its tiny population - had no church. The new railway line then brought wealthy industrialists from the cities to live in the houses he built. The Reverend Thomas decided that they should have church music second to none - so good that people would come from miles around to hear it. In 1864, he built a new church, about five times bigger than the village needed, and installed an organ with a specification more advanced than that of many cathedral organs of the day.

2: Special choir, Arthington, 1964.

​Opposite the church, he built a choir school, in a house known as The Gables. Here he installed a professional musician to train the boys he paid to sing: they arrived by train on Friday afternoon, stayed at The Gables and went to their homes after evening service on Sunday. ​Men applying for posts as gardeners, footmen, carters and other jobs on the estate had unexpected interviews. “Are you tenor or bass?”; “I will play a phrase on the piano - please sing it afterwards” - and so on. These auditions touched only briefly on the jobs for which they had applied.

For 50 years, until the outbreak of war in 1914, Arthington church was regularly filled to capacity by lovers of good music. Special trains were run to bring them in from towns and villages. Frederick Delius, born in 1862, (pic 1) lived nearby at Bridge House (see map below). He had held strong humanist views, but may well have gone along to hear this celebrated and unusual choir.

With war, the glory departed - though thanks to an energetic churchwarden, it was possible to assemble an impressive choir to celebrate the centenary of the church pic. 2 (two members of that choir moved to Te Aroha). Local people are joined by the choir of the Army Apprentices’ School nearby: the Personage with the Bishop (foreground) is the then Princess Royal, sister of King George VI. At the time this photograph was taken, many older residents remembered the days of voice-tested butlers!

The Civil War in the later 1930s took many War Correspondents to Spain. The numbers were, of course, nothing like those which represent world press and television at today’s crises. The Otago alumnus and Rhodes Scholar, Geoffrey Cox (pic 3), reported for London’s News Chronicle. Richard Sheepshanks, grandson to the Reverend Thomas, was correspondent for the News Agency, Reuters: he had grown up at Arthington and regarded the village as home.

3: Geoffrey Cox c. 1936; New Zealand-born war journalist and television pioneer.

One day in 1937, he was one of a party of journalists travelling by car to a war zone – Geoffrey Cox was not one of the number. Their vehicle was struck by a stray shell and Sheepshanks and two others were killed almost instantaneously. Chance allowed the fourth member of the party to emerge almost unscathed.

This was the correspondent of the London Times – H.A.R. Philby, universally called Kim. He had been recruited as a Russian agent whilst he was at Cambridge and was probably one of their most successful spies. His name will forever be linked with those of Burgess, Maclean and Blunt. It was not until a quarter of a century after his escape from the wrecked Spanish car that he was unmasked and fled to Russia.Richard Sheepshanks has a memorial in the south transept of the church his grandfather had built. Geoffrey Cox enjoyed a distinguished career: his 1936 book* on aspects of the fighting in Spain has recently been reprinted with additional material. Philby died in Moscow in 1988.

*Defence of Madrid” by Sir Geoffrey Cox, republished by Otago University Press (2006).